Cliftonville Football Club will host a series of player recruitment trials later this month in a bid to unearth some potential stars of the future.

Young players aged from 5-18 are being invited to attend the trials at Solitude, which will be held from May 29-31.

The aim is to discover and nurture exciting young talent who will one day play for the club's first team.

A number of Cliftonville's current senior squad have come through the junior ranks, including the Donnelly brothers, Jay and Rory, and Tomas Cosgrove, who have all now played over 100 games each for the Reds.

Jay Donnelly came through the ranks at Solitude

Marc Smyth, who is Head of Youth Development at Cliftonville, said: "As a club we have gone through quite a transition in the past two years.

"When I took the job my aim was to develop an elite academy at Cliftonville. We want to help young players progress their careers, and ultimately play for the first team one day.

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"We might just find a handful of players from these trials who will come in the train and play with our underage teams.

"Some people might think that is unfair or cruel on some of the kids, but the goal of these trials is to find players who will strengthen Cliftonville FC.

"But it is important for any kid interested to come along and try it out. It is better to come and give it a shot than not try at all. So we would encourage anyone interested to come along.

"We have open training sessions for kids born in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and these are open to kids of all ability. These are fun based sessions where the kids learn good social and football skills.

"As for the other age groups, we are looking for kids of a specific ability who we believe can potentially progress to the Irish League and play for our senior team.

"We have the best intentions of the kids at heart. We want them to be a success, and we would love to see some of them get a career across the water. We have seen the likes of Rory Donnelly, Joe Gormley and Liam Boyce get full-time careers.

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"We have had a total of nine Academy players progress to Cliftonville's first team, including more recently Aaron Donnelly, Declan Dunne and Daniel Reynolds. We have others like Gary Donnelly and Ross Lavery.

"We have also had a couple of lads who have moved to England without any publicity.

"So if you are good enough, you will get your chance at Cliftonville.

"One thing we would stipulate is that any kid who is registered with another club must get permission from that club to attend our trials."